Intelligence from Australia's Pine Gap base is being used on US
battlefields, leaked documents from the US National Security Agency have
revealed for the first time.

The documents reveal that the base outside Alice Springs, officially
titled Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, provides detailed geolocation
intelligence to the US military that can be used to locate targets,
including for special forces and drone strikes.

The use of lethal unmanned drones by the US military has been blamed for
hundreds of civilian deaths across countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan
Syria, Yemen and Somalia.

The documents, which Background
Briefing is publishing for the first time, come from the massive archive
of classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

One document, titled "NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia" is
marked "top secret", and demonstrates that the role of Pine Gap, referred to
by its NSA codeword RAINFALL, has become more military-focused over time.

It says: "Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap (RAINFALL) [is] a site which
plays a significant role in supporting both intelligence activities and
military operations."

Another document reads: "One of RAINFALL's primary mission areas is the
detection and geolocation of Communications Intelligence, Electronic
Intelligence and Foreign Instrumentation signals."

Finding targets for America's military strikes

Locating the source of signals is crucial for targeting military action,
including the lethal unmanned drone strikes.

Richard Tanter, a professor at the University of Melbourne's school of
political and social studies and the co-author of a recent Nautilus
Institute report on Pine Gap, says the documents confirm the facility's
military role.

"Those documents provide authoritative confirmation that Pine Gap is
involved, for example, in the geolocation of cell phones used by people
throughout the world, from the Pacific to the edge of Africa," he said.

"It shows us that Pine Gap knows the geolocations, it derives the phone
numbers, it often derives the content of any communications, it provides the
ability for the American military to identify and place in real time the
location of targets of interest."

Another secret NSA document, a "site profile" of Pine Gap, explains that
the facility's role is not only to collect signals, but to analyse them.

These PROFORMA signals are the communications data of radar and weapon
systems such as surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter
aircraft — vital tactical information that is provided in near real-time to
US forces on the battlefield.

Senior veteran speaks about facility's role

David Rosenberg, a 23-year veteran of the NSA who worked inside Pine Gap
as team leader of weapon signals analysis for 18 years until 2008, confirms
the base's geolocation capability.

"We're talking about the ability of satellites to geolocate particular
electronic transmissions," he says.

"The tasking we get at Pine Gap, is [to] look for this particular signal
coming out of this particular location. If you find it, report it, and if
you find anything else of interest, report that as well.

"That is the kind of tasking we are looking for. It would be up to the
recipients who get this kind of intelligence to make these types of
decisions to say, 'Is that relevant? Is that what we are looking for? Are
these the people we are targeting?'"

But Mr Rosenberg says preventing civilian casualties is a high priority.

"One thing I can certainly tell you the governments of Australia, and the
United States would of course want to minimise all civilian casualties," he
says.

"Pine Gap does help to provide limitation of civilian casualties by
providing accurate intelligence."

Could Australian personnel be charged with war crimes?

Not everyone is sure things are that clear cut.

Emily Howie, the director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights
Law Centre, believes Pine Gap's potential role in drone strikes may leave
Australians open to prosecution.

"The legal problem that's created by drone strikes is that there may very
well be violations of the laws of armed conflict, or war crimes as it's
called colloquially, and that Australia may be involved in those potential
war crimes through the facility at Pine Gap," she says.

"Australia, in so far as it is locating suspects that the US targets, is
assisting the US. So it could be liable for any crimes committed by the US,
in terms of aiding and assisting in that.

"The question then is: is the killing that's done by the United States a
war crime or not?"

Ms Howie argues there is an urgent need for greater public knowledge and
debate about the Pine Gap base.

"What we have here are credible and really serious allegations made
against the personnel at Pine Gap that they could be involved in assisting
international crimes — war crimes — and we have absolutely zero transparency
around what's happened," she says.

However, Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian
Strategic Policy Institute, an independent thinktank in Canberra funded
largely by the Department of Defence, says Pine Gap's role is a natural part
of Australia's alliance with the US.

"If you accept that the USA and Australia, we're fighting in necessary
conflicts in the Middle East, then it's appropriate that our intelligence
facilities support those conflicts," he says.

"It reflects a reality that both Australia and the United States and a
significant number of other countries besides, are engaged in military
operations against a fairly entrenched enemy in the form of extremists or
terrorists that are operating in a number of countries in the Middle East.
So I think it's perfectly reasonable that we should be using our
intelligence resources to support our military operations in in those
countries."

According to Cian Westmoreland, who worked for four years as a US Air
Force signals relay technician for lethal drones in Afghanistan, it's
difficult to say who is responsible for any one piece of targeting
information.

"All of this information that's getting sucked up is being used to
basically develop targets and find out where the next strike is going to
be," he says.

"You have different countries doing different things all working
together. You have stations in Great Britain and the Australians would be
working with the Americans and the British.

"It's collaborative, and it's really hard to say 'the Australians are
responsible for this' or 'the British are responsible for that'.

"Everybody is working together and if the Australians were involved in
one piece that happened to be used in a strike, they're essentially
complicit with whatever the end result is."

This report was prepared in collaboration with The
Intercept, a US investigative news website. The leaked NSA documents are
available on the Background
Briefing website.